


exit 77

by nixneptune



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguity, Setting Dump, Surreal, dreamscape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:15:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29900946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nixneptune/pseuds/nixneptune
Summary: “Our home is the boundary between worlds, and it’s all we’ve ever known...”this is a setting dump i wrote based off a weird surreal dream i had





	exit 77

The small road next to us heads straight to hell. It cuts across the fields, and is nothing but scar tissue, with its wide gaping asphalt and faded paint. It’s almost an eyesore, almost, except every once in a while, a phantom car comes from the godly kingdom in the north, and vanishes after we all watch it rumble past in silence. After it’s gone from sight, we forget. We all know where it goes after that. 

Rain sometimes falls here. It’s never the watery rain, always fire and shadow rain, bringing thick soot and clouds of ash from above. And with it comes winds that tousle our hair, while the fields only stand silent. We feel the winds, but the land never does. The washed out wheat fields don’t sway and wave here, and we don’t get mesmerized by their motions to where we mistake it for a rich golden ocean. The wheat is still, and it makes its home poking out from the ashy soil. At times when the shadow rain clears, you can stare out at the horizon, but it’s nothing but endless heads of wheat standing motionless and awaiting your next move while the sky looms over in a deep umber haze.  
Brown skies mean tornadoes, but here, none ever come. Just once we’d like to watch those clouds swirl and churn, and not supply that heavy feeling that comes along with their constant presence. Some light peeks through, but only small slivers that cast on the rigid fields. It doesn’t illuminate anything, or lighten the mood, just creates eerie unwanted splotches against an otherwise dark, lifeless world.  
The town mimics the fields outside: stiff, long dead, and washed out. The trees that line the main road don’t sway in the wind, similar to the wheat, and their shadowy leafless branches reach out into the road like twisted fingers. The road itself is made of an oily black rock that strives to even have the semblance of a paved asphalt road. But with the awkwardness it creates by creating an unnatural shimmer and splitting the town in uneven halves, we know it will never get there.  
We don’t even know what time the town is in. The buildings often flicker, and their times are split. Once we saw a phantom gas station flicker to a stable, full of faint whinnies and spectral horses, then almost immediately return to what it was before: just an empty, mocking reminder that civilization could exist here. The old market is boarded up and grown over, but it sometimes flickers into a new grocery store, alive with chatter and fresh food. Then, after a moment, the glitch is gone, and we’re left with only the splintering wood planks sealing the old door closed, and the stench of rotting produce from the inside. Those small fleeting moments of life we have are the closest we get to normalcy here. But we wish the town would pick a time.  
There is all but a painful and crushing silence in the town. It plagues us, settling upon us like dense fog no matter where we go and creating a terrible sense of dread. We almost know something should be coming, like a calm before the storm, but just like the foreboding brown clouds, the silence never brings terror. We feel it deep within us, like the silent fog is weighing down our very insides, and sometimes we fake sounds within our own minds to make at least something seem normal: the shutters smacking against old wood, the faint conversations of ghostly people when the supermarket flickers to life, and sometimes, the pleading screams of those in the town down south. Knowing those down the road suffer more than us, even if it’s a figment of our imaginations, helps put our minds at ease. Anything to distract from that weighty disease of a silence. 

Our home is the boundary between worlds, and it’s all we’ve ever known. All we’ve ever known are the stagnant scenes and changing times and eternal silence. We know them unlike any other, yet they remain an enigma, because all we’ve ever known is the middle.


End file.
